Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed 225 years ago on July 4, 1776, lies in the center of a new image from a NASA Earth-observing satellite. This true-color view of the northeastern United States includes a fitting display of the reddish colors of soils, grayish-whites of urban areas and clouds, and blue hues of water.

The image was taken by the spaceborne Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer instrument on NASA's Terra satellite. The image is available at

The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer, built and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is one of several Earth-observing experiments aboard the Terra satellite, launched in December 1999. The instrument acquires images of Earth at nine angles simultaneously, using nine separate cameras pointed forward, downward and backward along its flight path. More information about the experiment is available at http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.